Known locally as the "Quiet Giant" in this Kansas City suburb, Peterson has evolved with little fanfare from a tiny, retail-oriented manufacturer to a quarter-billion-dollar, multi-faceted corporation whose safety lighting products and other services reach millions of customers worldwide.

Today the family-owned company headquarters on a 44-acre corporate campus in a state-of-the-art, 670,000-square-foot facility housing all departments of Peterson's vertically integrated operations.

Tobe Tennyson, longtime Peterson associate and archivist, recently compiled a timeline marking significant milestones in the history of the company.

"I've been fortunate to be in the middle of so much change and growth at Peterson," he said. "And this is just the beginning — we will continue to grow."

Peterson is now one of America's top three safety lighting manufacturers, offering a line of over 2,200 lighting-related products, according to a company news release.

"We're proud to be celebrating our 65th anniversary," Peterson President and CEO Don Armacost, Jr. said "While much has changed here, one thing that hasn't is a tradition of square dealing that my father established in the early days. It's brought this company a long way, and will continue to guide our relations with customers, suppliers and employees as we move ahead."